Guild Wars 2

You’ve got no condi removal outside cleansing wave?

Everybody uses cantrips because without them you have no mobility outside d/d. And no mobility means death.

On my staff I either run all cantrips, or my team needs to babysit me. Scepter is a bit better but it’s useless in wvw because it has little useful aoe.

Indoles.1467:

Aeri.5738:

Condition removal at the right time and that trapper dude is gone.

This but you need to make sure you apply constant damage to them as trap rangers can continuously apply many different conditions to you at once while if built right, be heavily evasive. If you find yourself losing, check to see if they have signet of the hunt and if they don’t fleeing should be relatively easy unless they are using a greatsword. If they are using a greatsword, their condition damage is fairly heavily kitten though.

What conditions are the applying outside traps? Bleeds needs flanking, and if you dodge the traps they have no damage.

Trap rangers mostly perform well against melee heavy builds, while solid ranged builds outmuscle them and with a pitiful 600 range throw trap you won’t be damaging anyone who wants to kite you at 900+ range.

A good mesmer or engineer will make quick work out of you.

No, I want my earth signet’s root. The problem with it is that the cast time is too long for how obvious the animation is (the visual shows so clearly, and with a 3/4 activation time most of the time it will be dodged).

Before release, during beta, they ran this PR campaign about their wonderful system of rewards via tokens. EVEERYONE gets rewarded equally for their efforts, unlike THAT game that had RNG drops and you’d come out emptyhanded.

They showed explorables, people preordered many boxes. And then by the end of beta they introduced the Mystic Forge, and after release they pulled off their bait and switch on the rewards system. Everything outside explorables became RNG, currency like karma was never used meaningfully.

Of course, they say this later summer they are revamping their rewards. Which probably means they’re making the RNG less crappy now that they’ve sucked all this RL money exchange for gem>gold conversion out of people for quite a few months.

Remember, every item in this game that is not a fractal skin or explorable dungeon skin is obtained by farming gold. And ridiculous gold farms make them a lot of money on the gem store.

This game is economy first, gameplay second.

You don’t need a guide to figure out D/P. The playstyle existed since beta. It just so happened that when CND could crit for 4k plus a backstab, the benefit of being immune to melee, free stomps, and unstoppable stealth were not deemed competitive with just globalling someone.

Just like S/D thieves existed in WvW prior to larcenous strike, simply because they ran a high sustained damage/stunlock build instead of a sheer burst build.

It’s just people need to be convinced by a forum post to play what they would have played earlier if they had been willing to experiment.

BM bunker rangers and dd eles existed during beta but their use only became popularized by seeing them pop more often in spvp.

Dedlaw.9130:

Entropy.4732:

Sure, you can argue (as casinos do) that the responsibility rests with the client, not the house. But the house is responsible for setting up the trap. And Anet should really reconsider this method for future events.

That’s like saying it’s the pub’s fault for you getting drunk and getting hungover because they gave you access to the alcohol. Or a motor company’s fault you got a fine because they sold you the car you were speeding in.

I’m not defending the gambling, but people really DO need to take responsibility. It’s not compulsory to buy boxes. It’s not compulsory to place bets. If people wanted to gamble with their money, that’s their choice.

Except gambling as a psychological disorder is compulsory.

In Miami, FL, where I live, our local casino is known to have arranged deals with nursing homes/elderly medical centers, where they cart elderly people and their pensions to the slot machines as “therapy”. And the older ladies, mathematically ignorant and bored, are robbed of their pensions.

Free will is actually a very illusory thing. Your brain is wired a certain way, and you are easy to manipulate.

They won’t get the highly educated people with no predisposition to addictive behavior, but they will get the ignorant and those with addictive behaviors.

Casinos are predatory, and the only reason they exist is because unscrupulous states make money off removing wealth from its citizens while occasionally concentrating a pittance of that wealth on a single winner. It’s not socially beneficial at all.

There is also quite a crisis with alcohol consumption. Just because prohibition is gone doesn’t remove the fact that a lot of violence that happens at later times of the day are alcohol related, vehicular homicide is closely tied to alcohol consumption, and you have a culture where alcohol consumption is seen as par for the course as a recreational activity when the amounts of alcohol we are consuming as a culture is destructive.

You could say the same with cigarettes, but when children and teenagers grow around peers who drink and smoke, and these activities have likely negative repercussions, the concept of free will becomes laughable. Most will learn to like these substances, and economies and businesses who profit off this cultural addiction are not harmless — they’re amoral. It’s one thing to consume alcohol as a culinary venture, but it’s another for clubs to sell boatloads of alcohol to impair the judgement of the patrons.

Nobody is blameless in this process.

jkough.7316:

sorrow.2364:

In my opinion, all the nerfs were right. So are the buff (excluding FS).

1. Pistol Whip: it isn’t all about damage. Pistol Whip has also two utilities. It was able to deal the DPS of Hundred Blades (obviously considering its shorter duration) while having an evade and a stun in it. That skill pretty much had anything. They decided to nerf the damage while mantaining its utility. Now the damage of Pistol Whip isn’t amazing, just average, but the utilities make the difference. An all-in-one skill isn’t healthy in any skillbar.

2. Dancing Dagger: that skill was ridiculous prior nerf. A couple of DD thrown at someone ressing another player were able to completely wipe them both. They nerfed the damage to be consistent on what the skill was supposed to be: an utility, a snare.
It is pretty useful against the one who are running away, especially when you consider that D/D lacks any form of movement impariment skills. The fact that the damage is insignificant now doesn’t mean that the skill hasn’t it’s use.

3. Cloak and Dagger: pretty much what I’ve said about DD. It is an utility and dealt also amazing damage. It was also the skill present in the backstab combo. Considering that an UTILITY SKILL was able to deal 5k+ damage prior the nerf, the damage adjusting seems fair to me.

4. Caltrops: be serious. That skill allowed to wipe an entire group of enemies while staying in stealth. It was incredibly easy to play and incredibly effective plus, when traited, any thief would be able to mantain caltrops on the floor almost 100% uptime. Adding this with the uncatchable trait, any bleed thief would wipe you while not going out of stealth a single time. The nerf was needed and thank god it came.

5. Mug: that skill dealt 5k damage instantly. Coupled with the backstab combo, any thief would be capable to deal 11k+ damage in a fraction of a second and then finish the target spamming heartseeker. That was sick. While they did not made Mug useless (2k heal is useless?), they just decreased its offensive capability (which thief surely doesn’t lack) while giving some devensive use.

Now Flanking Strike is too much effective. It completely punish the use of ANY BOON in this game and some professions completely rely on them to be effective.
An S/D thief has more boons of a Guardian, an Ele and more might stacks than an HGH engi.

Nerfs are as needed as buffs. If ArenaNet left the game as it is, we would see only the same overperforming profession in both PvP, WvWvW and PvE, killing, in fact, any form of game variety.

So stop cry about nerfs and get used to play into a balanced environment.

You lost all credibility you might have had when you said Thief, overperforming and PvE all in one sentence.

Thieves overperform in PvE alongside warriors. They don’t do the cleaving of warriors, but they have better single target damage and burst in pve, which means that you bring 2 warriors/mesmer/thief/guardian for balanced groups, and if you don’t need defense you substitute the guardian with another thief.

Thieves and warriors blow every other class’s damage out of the water in PvE, it’s not even close. Thieves are just used less because you die more easily on them than the kitten kitten warrior who can tank a big hit.

And for all the complaint about these nerfs in tpvp, they were done for wvw and spvp reasons.

It’s not about learning to counter a thief. In WvW a thief is one of the best 1v1 specs, if not the best roaming spec because they don’t have to stay on a point or be forced into a team fight. They get full berserker stats with about an extra 60% crit damage and another whopping 10% from food for an extra 70% crit damage on their backstabs. And they can disengage at will because wvw is not a format that artificially encourages turtling on a point.

Go play hotjoins as a necro or warrior or guardian or ranger and see how fun it is to have a team made of 6 people who are either mesmers or thieves, and all it takes is 2 of them to gib even the best of bunkers in a few seconds.

You’ve got 2 dodges and stunbreaks are 45+ sec cd’s; the amount of times you are going to be jumped by a backstab thief happens many more times than that and you will die in a few seconds regardless of having 1800+ toughness.

spvp represents a minuscule portion of the pvp that happens in this game. That you want thieves made further overlords of WvW roaming and spvp cheesiness for the sake of seeing yourself equally represented with ele/mesmer is destructive for everybody else.

Jericho.4521:

I really wanted to love the GS, I like the weapon both in skills and aesthetics. However, I stopped using it actually because of thieves.

It’s just really hard to stop a good thief with a GS. They’ll close the gap instantly and then you’re blowing long CD’s just to stay alive it seems. You have the knockback on number 5, but once that’s gone it’s really hard to kite them or protect yourself unlike staff.

It’s a shame because it has such fast clone generation, and the berserker can hit like a truck when it actually works. It’s just that the staff is so awesome at holding off any sort of melee class and is just too flexible for me to give up.

I don’t get this.

You use greatsword to open pressure, summon the phantasm before they stealth/steal.

The moment they try to get in your grill with melee you switch to mainhand sword and punish them with a swap?blurred frenzy while your phantasmal berserker and swords man spike him.

If he tries to pull a burst combo on you you use on of your peels.

I run Full berserker, 30 in Inspiration, 20 duelist, 20 illusions. I run greatsword sword/sword.

You’ve got an 8 sec cd 2 sec distortion, vigor on crit, a knockback, and a 12 sec cd 3 second channel block. That means most of the time they stealth if you’re not dodging you are either blocking or immune. And in an emergency you can just decoy and heal safely.

I run mantra heal with harmonious mantras. That means I got a 10 sec cd heal, and I can recharge it twice safely with decoy or mass invisibility. With harmonious mantra I get a 3k heal on top of recharging my mantra, and because I remove conditions on healing I got 2 condi removals per heal.

I run Blink/Decoy and signet of Illusions. People will say you have no condi removal but you’ve got 2 every 10 seconds from your heal, and the only class that can engage you with conditions at 1200 range is a staff necromancer. With a greatsword you can just kite engineers and scepter necros and BM rangter without issue as all their weapons are 900 range.

Just keep an eye to dodge pulls like magnetic shield or dark path and you’ll be fine.

The fact is on berserker phantasm my berserker is hitting people for 5-6k, my blurred frenzy does 4-5k damage, and my swordsman is doing another 5-6k damage, and the swordsman hits every 3.5 seconds.

I can stall with my stealths and have enough phantasms so that if a thief unstealths he will immediately eat around 10k damage, and if they run gib builds they’re around 12-15k health with little toughness, so my phantasms will be removing 2/3 his health and if he tries to rush me I’ll just swap/blurred frenzy while my phantasms strike him again and he explodes.

I really don’t get people that complain about people getting in melee and killing them with the greatsword. Duh, don’t use the greatsword in melee unless it’s to use the knockback. Switch to sword/sword and you will hurt them just as badly as they hurt you.

Radmage.3741:

Zenith.7301:

Radmage.3741:

Zenith.7301:

Radmage.3741:

What kind of things can I do to better my ranger? I like the play style of the sword/dagger but actually sticking to a target when they remove cripple is hard, and am I supposed to be speccing for crit or condition? I need help because I don’t get what I am doing with this class.

Run hydromancy sigil on sword for easier time sticking to a target.

Ranger melee is very easy to kite, however. It’s no heartseeker/shadowstep/steal/infiltrator strike root trololol class like the thief and it doesn’t have access to things like leg specialist from the warrior that helps keep targets in melee.

Your secondary weaponset must be either greatsword or shortbow for this reason. The shortbow provides an option to apply pressure while closing distance, and the greatsword affords you an extra leap.

I you run double melee, you must spec for power via cleric gear.

If you run trapper, spec rabid.

If you run BM condi bunker, go for settler’s gear with either settler accessories or ascended apothecary accessories.

What is BM?

Beast master traitline bunker.

30 wilderness survival, 10 nature magic, 20 BM, with 10 optional points in either skirmishing or filling up the last BM points.

Is this mainly for being tanky and letting your pet do all the damage?

Yes. Ranger damage scaling is pretty bad and regardless your pet can bet 40-60% of your damage.

Since the ranger doesn’t have much in terms of built in survival outside his sword weapon, you need to build for longevity. The ranger has little access to controlled burst, and building for glass cannon makes you a very easy kill to anyone, especially thieves and mesmers and elementalists.

The build outside trapper will let you cope well with any form of opponent, and most importantly it gives you the ability to disengage from anything.

Radmage.3741:

Zenith.7301:

Radmage.3741:

What kind of things can I do to better my ranger? I like the play style of the sword/dagger but actually sticking to a target when they remove cripple is hard, and am I supposed to be speccing for crit or condition? I need help because I don’t get what I am doing with this class.

Run hydromancy sigil on sword for easier time sticking to a target.

Ranger melee is very easy to kite, however. It’s no heartseeker/shadowstep/steal/infiltrator strike root trololol class like the thief and it doesn’t have access to things like leg specialist from the warrior that helps keep targets in melee.

Your secondary weaponset must be either greatsword or shortbow for this reason. The shortbow provides an option to apply pressure while closing distance, and the greatsword affords you an extra leap.

I you run double melee, you must spec for power via cleric gear.

If you run trapper, spec rabid.

If you run BM condi bunker, go for settler’s gear with either settler accessories or ascended apothecary accessories.

What is BM?

Beast master traitline bunker.

30 wilderness survival, 10 nature magic, 20 BM, with 10 optional points in either skirmishing or filling up the last BM points.

Radmage.3741:

What kind of things can I do to better my ranger? I like the play style of the sword/dagger but actually sticking to a target when they remove cripple is hard, and am I supposed to be speccing for crit or condition? I need help because I don’t get what I am doing with this class.

Run hydromancy sigil on sword for easier time sticking to a target.

Ranger melee is very easy to kite, however. It’s no heartseeker/shadowstep/steal/infiltrator strike root trololol class like the thief and it doesn’t have access to things like leg specialist from the warrior that helps keep targets in melee.

Your secondary weaponset must be either greatsword or shortbow for this reason. The shortbow provides an option to apply pressure while closing distance, and the greatsword affords you an extra leap.

I you run double melee, you must spec for power via cleric gear.

If you run trapper, spec rabid.

If you run BM condi bunker, go for settler’s gear with either settler accessories or ascended apothecary accessories.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

People whine that they have to do PvP achievements… Anet removes the PvP achievements from the meta… people whine that they are removed….

This why you should completely ignore everything on the forums and just develop the game how they see fit.

People whine because the removal came after they had sat through the unpleasantness and are envious of people who do not need to sit through the unpleasant experience like them.

Scepter is not a dungeon weapon. It has the worst sustained damage out of the weapons (because its autoattacks suck and only air hits multiple targets). It has bigger numbers that might seem misleading. But when that Dragon Tooth that hits for 7-8k crits actually takes 2 seconds to deliver the damage on a stationary target, it’s pretty miserable — in 2 seconds autoattack crits from other classes already outdamage that, and for around one second longer 100 blades does nearly double the damage.

For WvW, you will use scepter strictly for roaming. It is not a team fight weapon as it has no aoe outside DT and air auto, with the odd Phoenix in between.

The build for scepter is 0/20/0/20/30. Arcane missile at least as one of your utilities, with one of the cantrips. The final utility is optional, either earth signet or arcane wave or a second cantrip.

Most eles are not running Ether Renewal after the Mist Form nerf. A lot of them still run either signet of restoration, or the glyph heal.

BTW, the ICD on cleansing water is 5 secs, not 10.

Your condi necro will not beat any competent bunker ele.

He’s got cleansing wave, evasive arcana cleansing wave, condition removal from water attunement (and since water attunement applies regen with elemental harmony from arcana, that’s 2 conditions removed just by switching to water attunement).

He’s got Armor of earth, cleansing fire (3 condis removed, does burning on you), and lightning flash.

So he pretty much negates any pressure you can do on him while he’s putting burning on you and smacking you with burning speed/lightning whip, circle of earth.

You can return burning, but he’ll wipe it off, and he’s got more than one source of burning to put on you while he pummels you.

He’s also got 2 40 sec cd cc’s while at best cc breaker you’ve got is a 45 sec traited one, or 60 sec baseline spectral walk.

You’ve got no way to recover your hp from sustained damage outside your heal and a mediocre regen boon. He’s got constant hp recovery from more sources than just regen.

He’ll simply outlast you and shut down your pressure while you’ve got little means to shut down his. He won’t blow armor of earth until you’ve used corrupt boon, and he can cleanse the fear off himself with smart water attunement swap.

Infinite.

Our group was 2 ele, guardian, warrior, and mesmer.

Warrior was dead most of the time.

swiftpaw.6397:

Reduce amount of spiders to give the average party a time window to hit the boss between mob respawns imo. Respawns should also take longer.

I don’t think it’s the intent of the encounter that you clear the spiders. You need to kite them.

They should perhaps reduce the groups a bit, but for once it’s nice to see an encounter in an explorable where you just can’t sit and melee the boss to death.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

bravoart.5308:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You do realize that you’re not required to complete the new achievements, nor are you required to purchase anything from the Gem Store… right? They’re all optional.

You’re not required to play the game
You’re not required to take a bath
You’re not required to breathe air.

kitten argument.

Of the three sentences you listed, the last one IS required if you want to continue to exist. The first and second are indeed optional.

If you want to continue to exist. Which is optional if you’re aware of what people do when they don’t want that option.

Everything is optional.

The art department delivers great stuff. The gameplay department, not so much. The rewards department is the marketing department.

I think this changes is something you can live with if they reduced the boss’s HP. The problem is how long you need to live through these huge groups of condition happy, hardhitting spiders before the boss is down.

Sylvari.6083:

Zenith.7301:

Sylvari.6083:

This kitten can’t be done, second time I try this with PUG and second time we are forced to leave the kittening dungeon because you can’t even get to the tree without spawning 20 spiders. And why aren’t devs answering anything in this kittening forum?

A staff ele or two is all you need. You just gotta be competent at kiting, have speed signet equipped and use ether renewal and cleanse when appropriate (save a cleanse for when he will root you).

Mind taking me into your team if you do that path again? I can pay :P

Don’t think my mates want to do it again. But if they do, feel free to add me to Friends List and arrange for a run.

Don’t need to pay.

Sylvari.6083:

This kitten can’t be done, second time I try this with PUG and second time we are forced to leave the kittening dungeon because you can’t even get to the tree without spawning 20 spiders. And why aren’t devs answering anything in this kittening forum?

A staff ele or two is all you need. You just gotta be competent at kiting, have speed signet equipped and use ether renewal and cleanse when appropriate (save a cleanse for when he will root you).

They broke it. Spiders spawned infinitely.

What we did is we grabbed some staff eles, with speed signet, and just kited spiders around, did Ether Renewal for condi removal, and just laid down chill/cripple/stun fields while throwing aoe at the boss.

The launch is negligible if you preempt it with positioning, much like banishing crap to a wall.

The daze also has a delivery delay, which is awful, and the knockdown is single target whereas earthquake is not only a blast finisher but an aoe knockdown.

I just don’t see where your damage rotation is going when you’re missing out on churning earth and fire grab and flame circle for a substantial aoe sequence that you don’t get with any other weaponset besides the staff.

I just don’t think an ele with dagger air auto spam and focus is going to be desirable over a guardian who can output similar single target damage, MUCH better aoe damage, and better support outside personal survival.

Just look at a tank warrior, for example. They, too, can be raw damage soakers with defensive traits, but that survival is entirely selfish outside shout healing/condi removal.

Ratty.5176:

haviz.1340:

Self-proclaimed best tank eu once said that elementalist is the best class to absorb damage. I agree with him.

Yeah I can definitely absorb more damage on my Ele than my Guard. When I need it Protection, Regen, 7s of Invulnerability, 3 blocks and Earth Shield + healing. The Guard can’t chain nearly that much together, though it does have higher base Toughness and Armor. The real advantage the Guard is he can give Aegis to the rest of the group and can have Reflects up more often.

The ele does total kitten damage if he goes for tank.

The focus guts all your burst, you lose the aoe cc, and you lose ring of fire/firegrab/earthquake for might stacking and big aoe.

I can gear my ele pvt with berk jewels and weapons, and he won’t do the damage of my guardian on the same set, ever.

Also, unlike the guardian, ele sustained is absolutely dreadful. The way they designed the ele hurts him in pve because he’s balanced for pvp by having multiple damage skills on long cooldowns, but in pve autoattack is most classes’ bulk of sustained damage outside skills like 100b/Whirling Wrath. And ele autoattacks not only have no meaningful cleaving outside lightning whip, but even single target ele autoattacks are pitiful damage.

In pvp, where access to burning from dragon’s breath is a boon, is actually a weakness in pve because attacks with split attribute benefits usually have terrible stat scaling. This is partly why the ranger’s kit sucks as well — abilities that combine direct damage and condition application are usually terrible because the direct damage portion scales terrible and has low base, and because conditions are terrible in pve you don’t gear to support them (and the conditions baseline are so weak).

I love playing my ele because he’s fun, but outside explorables with lightning hammer spec, running high level fractals lightning hammer is just being a warrior without the utility and much more risk. In every aspect he’s overshadowed by the guardian for pve purposes.

The problem in this game has always been that the toolkit of the guardian and warrior are so much superior to the toolkits offered by other classes. At least the thief can bring the best single target spike capacity, and shadow refuge/daggerstorm/projectile destruction, but the rest of the classes just don’t bring anything unique to compete that a warrior/guardian don’t do better.

randomfightfan.4091:

Zenith.7301:

That’s easy to say. Try glass cannon dredge fractal beyond 48 while everyone is ranged or more tanky and see how “easy” it is.

Try glass cannon in ascalon fractal as one of the few melee guys and get 2-shot by the warriors/mages.

Try eating an archdiviner melee as glass cannon without other guardians rotating aegis.

In explorables glass cannon works just fine. In high level fractals, only when supported by stacking guardians and warriors.

Back when I used to do fractals every day, I did 48 exclusively. I am a glass thief, not even a guard. I melee all those things except ascalon trash (I don’t know why anyone would melee when you do 4-5k cluster bombs and the vets do all the hard work). The trick is NOT eating those big shots to the face. The dodge key is amazing for avoiding such attacks. I don’t get how you could argue that Zerkers doesn’t work in fractals unless you have someone else tanky there. I’ve done every comp possible for 48 and never once had a problem with being zerker. It makes every run easier as long as you know how and when to use the dodge key. I’ve gone with double engi, tripple necro, double ranger, etc. groups. I’ve been in multiple groups where I was the only non-light armored so I had all the agro yet zerkers was still not doing anything to hold me back.

The mages in Ascalon will be killer for anyone. I’ve seen pure pvt guards go down just as fast as my zerker thief. If they were zerker too we might have been able to kill them before they got us. The best part about being guard or thief in that zone is all the evades you can use to avoid the initial burst or the free aiges that will block the entire first blob of attacks (if they hit at the same time, they’re all blocked).

Of course I can do it on my thief. As soon as I get pressured, I shadowstep the hell out and shortbow is a great aoe weapon.

My guardian has no shadow step — he’s got 2 dodges and aegis before vigor brings it back up, against waves of 7+ dredge. He’s got no feline grace or swiftness on dodge.

In fact, it’s much easier to do it on my zerker mesmer if I am the only zerker because I’ve got a 2 sec distortion on an 8 sec cd, with an offhand block, and disposable ai to soak some of the damage. And I’ve got a decent aoe ranged weapon in the greatsword. My zerker guardian gets pressured and needs to use scepter, and he does pretty crap damage in the end while he has ranged downtime before I heal up and get back in melee.

Quite frankly, I’ll bring a zerker thief or mesmer, and especially a warrior, over ever bringing a zerker ele or guardian in a PuG. I’ve never failed a 48 where it was my lack of damage. I kill even grawl lava elementals fast enough, and berserker armor is underbudget for the extra crit% damage. The berserker jewels and weapons and ruby orbs on armor is where I get my critdmg from.

randomfightfan.4091:

^
That.

Zerkers is always useful zen. Even if it’s only you using the set, you using it means the boss is now dying 20% faster. Imagine if all your teamates used zerkers! The way I think about it is if the boss is able to die before you run out of abilities, utilities, heals, and endurance, then you won’t need tanky gear. When you have tanky gear, you’re nerfing yourself b/c at some point during the fight you might have taken too long and will run out of any of your key skills. By going tankier, you’re ensuring that you’re going to get hit more. That’s why no one (that’s a power user) shouldn’t go zerker.

That’s easy to say. Try glass cannon dredge fractal beyond 48 while everyone is ranged or more tanky and see how “easy” it is.

Try glass cannon in ascalon fractal as one of the few melee guys and get 2-shot by the warriors/mages.

Try eating an archdiviner melee as glass cannon without other guardians rotating aegis.

In explorables glass cannon works just fine. In high level fractals, only when supported by stacking guardians and warriors.

Zoldyck.6241:

Zenith.7301:

they’re a cheap class that exploits a broken mechanic (stealth),

We won’t be stealthing if we don’t have the durability of a wet tissue.

Every glass cannon has the durability of this wet tissue; you’re not special. Spec acrobatics and toughness/vit with shadow arts and your wet tissue durability is gone plus sword evade.

You’re the one class besides mesmer that can afford to spec glass cannon and farm every other glass cannon in the game except mesmers, and even in your GC spec you’re able to threaten bunkers.

Stop playing glass cannon or knight armor and go regen bunker. Against sword thieves save the dodges/evade for larcenous strike (the stab), and against backstab D/P punish with bonfire and monarch’s leap while they’re stealthed so it’s hard for them to land a backstab.

You won’t kill a thief that doesn’t want to die because they’re a cheap class that exploits a broken mechanic (stealth), but at least you shouldn’t be dying to them if you pay attention.

Player Character.9467:

Zenith.7301:

Player Character.9467:

Zenith.7301:

Player Character.9467:

Zenith.7301:

Bright.9160:

Zenith.7301:

Bright.9160:

Lol, or farm CoF/CoE/Arah for a zerk set? CoE armor doesn’t look too bad. No one is forcing you to run it in full t3…

Looks matter to some people. The world does not revolve around your taste. My sylvari looks dreadful in human armor — I hate it. Most armor materials were designed with human models and skin tones in mind. CoF armor looks ridiculously silly on sylvari, as does CoE.

My point was that you complained about not being able to run DPS gear, because you couldn’t afford a new armor set… I pointed out why your argument was silly.

Either don’t complain about the money, or don’t complain about not having the armor set… That’s like purposely wearing shoes that hurt your feet, but wearing them for looking good. Either you don’t complain about your feet hurting, or you wear shoes that don’t hurt…

I didn’t complain about not being able to run berserker. Read what people say. I complained about not being to run berserker in t3 cultural.

You can make the separation. I won’t. For me it’s important that my characters look aesthetically pleasing when I play them. And in the case of my sylvari toons, it’s t3 cultural armor.

Whoah whoah calm down, http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Transmutation_Crystal any stats on any class appropriate skin…

The stone destroys the existing set, which I use for WvW. Too bad transmutation doesn’t function like in WoW where it doesn’t destroy the items involved; it just copies the skin over.

Ok now you’re not making sense, you want your t3 skin but you want different stats on it. Just do it and stop saying you can’t…

Read for once. It’s on my WvW set, which I use about as much if not more than I farm with zerker gear. I’m not about to destroy my WvW stat gear. You don’t run zerkers in wvw.

no you didn’t
“I didn’t complain about not being able to run berserker. Read what people say. I complained about not being to run berserker in t3 cultural.” (no such physical limitation exists)

Look, if you don’t want to run content because you can’t afford to dress your character up because you insist on wearing t3 cultural everywhere, go home, you clearly don’t want to actually participate in what they’re doing if you can’t manage to equip yourself.

Are you braindead? I’m already way past lv48, and it wasn’t thanks to your advice.

I don’t do fractal speed runs. I don’t even group with optimal setups. Last time we ran a 1 mesmer 4 ele 48 group.

Most groups I run are pugs. So excuse me if I don’t want to destroy my all purpose set on a guardian to have a pure DPS set that I’d barely get to use to good effect. Because here’s the kicker — berserker doesn’t work too well when only half the people or only me is sporting it, and especially when I’m the only one or maybe with another person spending my time in melee. It’s doomed to fail.

Player Character.9467:

Zenith.7301:

Player Character.9467:

Zenith.7301:

Bright.9160:

Zenith.7301:

Bright.9160:

Lol, or farm CoF/CoE/Arah for a zerk set? CoE armor doesn’t look too bad. No one is forcing you to run it in full t3…

Looks matter to some people. The world does not revolve around your taste. My sylvari looks dreadful in human armor — I hate it. Most armor materials were designed with human models and skin tones in mind. CoF armor looks ridiculously silly on sylvari, as does CoE.

My point was that you complained about not being able to run DPS gear, because you couldn’t afford a new armor set… I pointed out why your argument was silly.

Either don’t complain about the money, or don’t complain about not having the armor set… That’s like purposely wearing shoes that hurt your feet, but wearing them for looking good. Either you don’t complain about your feet hurting, or you wear shoes that don’t hurt…

I didn’t complain about not being able to run berserker. Read what people say. I complained about not being to run berserker in t3 cultural.

You can make the separation. I won’t. For me it’s important that my characters look aesthetically pleasing when I play them. And in the case of my sylvari toons, it’s t3 cultural armor.

Whoah whoah calm down, http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Transmutation_Crystal any stats on any class appropriate skin…

The stone destroys the existing set, which I use for WvW. Too bad transmutation doesn’t function like in WoW where it doesn’t destroy the items involved; it just copies the skin over.

Ok now you’re not making sense, you want your t3 skin but you want different stats on it. Just do it and stop saying you can’t…

Read for once. It’s on my WvW set, which I use about as much if not more than I farm with zerker gear. I’m not about to destroy my WvW stat gear. You don’t run zerkers in wvw.

Player Character.9467:

Zenith.7301:

Bright.9160:

Zenith.7301:

Bright.9160:

Lol, or farm CoF/CoE/Arah for a zerk set? CoE armor doesn’t look too bad. No one is forcing you to run it in full t3…

Looks matter to some people. The world does not revolve around your taste. My sylvari looks dreadful in human armor — I hate it. Most armor materials were designed with human models and skin tones in mind. CoF armor looks ridiculously silly on sylvari, as does CoE.

My point was that you complained about not being able to run DPS gear, because you couldn’t afford a new armor set… I pointed out why your argument was silly.

Either don’t complain about the money, or don’t complain about not having the armor set… That’s like purposely wearing shoes that hurt your feet, but wearing them for looking good. Either you don’t complain about your feet hurting, or you wear shoes that don’t hurt…

I didn’t complain about not being able to run berserker. Read what people say. I complained about not being to run berserker in t3 cultural.

You can make the separation. I won’t. For me it’s important that my characters look aesthetically pleasing when I play them. And in the case of my sylvari toons, it’s t3 cultural armor.

Whoah whoah calm down, http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Transmutation_Crystal any stats on any class appropriate skin…

The stone destroys the existing set, which I use for WvW. Too bad transmutation doesn’t function like in WoW where it doesn’t destroy the items involved; it just copies the skin over.

I don’t think scepter can work in full pvt or defensive gear. Either your air chain/phoenix crits alongside arcane utilities, or you have no pressure (since your sustained with scepter is bad, you need the burst). It’s important to have enough crit chance and crit dmg.

Bright.9160:

Zenith.7301:

Bright.9160:

Lol, or farm CoF/CoE/Arah for a zerk set? CoE armor doesn’t look too bad. No one is forcing you to run it in full t3…

Looks matter to some people. The world does not revolve around your taste. My sylvari looks dreadful in human armor — I hate it. Most armor materials were designed with human models and skin tones in mind. CoF armor looks ridiculously silly on sylvari, as does CoE.

My point was that you complained about not being able to run DPS gear, because you couldn’t afford a new armor set… I pointed out why your argument was silly.

Either don’t complain about the money, or don’t complain about not having the armor set… That’s like purposely wearing shoes that hurt your feet, but wearing them for looking good. Either you don’t complain about your feet hurting, or you wear shoes that don’t hurt…

I didn’t complain about not being able to run berserker. Read what people say. I complained about not being to run berserker in t3 cultural.

You can make the separation. I won’t. For me it’s important that my characters look aesthetically pleasing when I play them. And in the case of my sylvari toons, it’s t3 cultural armor.

I remember a duel with a sword thief, the flesh golem stood idle for like 20 seconds while the thief was wearing me down. AI in this game is rather bad.

Good thing I’m playing my Phantasm mesmer and S/D+D/P thief now. Same roaming results, quicker kills, half the kitten headache and no stupid nerfs in sight.

I’ve been even playing my scepter/dagger ele ala Phantaram spec with some cavalier items and have had similarly good outcomes.

It’s good to play classes that don’t have a 60/40 damage split ratio with the 60 and all burst capacity going to a crappy, paper thin/AoE hugging AI that can’t hit someone moving with swiftness.

Bright.9160:

Lol, or farm CoF/CoE/Arah for a zerk set? CoE armor doesn’t look too bad. No one is forcing you to run it in full t3…

Looks matter to some people. The world does not revolve around your taste. My sylvari looks dreadful in human armor — I hate it. Most armor materials were designed with human models and skin tones in mind. CoF armor looks ridiculously silly on sylvari, as does CoE.

randomfightfan.4091:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

randomfightfan.4091:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

10 mins

That’s why people are being so freak-show about it. If they can’t get their run done in 7 minutes or less, then something’s wrong.

yep, they better off searching 20 mins for a zerk warrior instead. Probably don’t get the math.

If they were searching for 20 mins then I’d agree but everybody either started out a warrior or rerolled a warrior. Zerk wars are so common now that zerk war only groups take 2 mins or less to fill up. Also no need to be an ahole just b/c you’re a necro. I’m not a warrior either, doesn’t give anyone the right to get snappy.

Can we really blame them? At the glacial pace of class balancing they do, you might as well spend 60g crafting a lv1 warrior to 80 and give him a set, rather than waiting 9+ months for the developers to start fixing garbage classes like the ranger or engineer or necromancer in PvE.

It’s not just minions. Rangers, mesmers, and guardian spirits are absolutely useless in zergs as well.

Most minions don’t cleave, and the aoe from the zerg immediately kills them.

On a mesmer phantasm spec (1v1 king everybody hates), even with 20% extra hp to phantasms and the extra 50% from the signet, the phantasm dies instantly upon being summoned in a zerg, before it can even do a single attack.

My ranger’s pet die easily in 5 seconds.

What makes it especially aggravating for the necro, though, is that when your minions die they enter rather long cd’s (similar to ranger pet when both pets get gibbed by the zerg), you can’t recall them to you, and most importantly — MINIONS OCCUPY VALUABLE UTILITY SLOTS. Outside guardian and mesmer phantasm utilities, necros are really crippled.

Pets just need 70-90% aoe damage avoidance.

Bright.9160:

Zenith.7301:

What weaponsets are we running for DPS guardians in fractal 48? I usually would run a pvt with zerker jewels/accessories and 30/30/10 symbols/altruistic healing spec, especially if my melee group needed the hammer permaprot and symbol healing.

But I’d like to try something else…

DPS means Zerker everywhere… You could get away with maybe knights weapons, but I run full zerk on everything.

As for weaponsets: Sword Focus for high DPS output. Staff for might stacking, GS for pulling and certain fights (elemental source, Asura, Grawl Shaman), Hammer for Ascalon (Ring of Warding yo), Grawl veteran event. Scepter focus for Grawl shaman.

I usually sit on Sw/Fc + Hammer (or GS). When I know there is a possibility I’ll need to swap to range (Ice shaman, elemental source), I’ll sit on Sc/Fc in my offset.

Currently my sigils are all mostly accuracy, but I’m thinking of switching to Force. Energy on focus and staff.

Yeah I get zerker is DPS, I just run this setup as a temporary compromise because I also WvW, and I don’t have another spare 100g sitting for a second set of cultural T3 armor to transmute to.

I hope to try sword soon because mostly I’ve ran greatsword and quite frankly I am tired of it, so I might go sword/focus and hammer instead.

What weaponsets are we running for DPS guardians in fractal 48? I usually would run a pvt with zerker jewels/accessories and 30/30/10 symbols/altruistic healing spec, especially if my melee group needed the hammer permaprot and symbol healing.

But I’d like to try something else…

I prefer taking the 10 out of earth and putting it in water. The xtra heal is substantial and you can either take vital striking for more initial burst or lower your water cooldowns for more sustainability.

If you want protection you can just switch to earth and then follow up with a frost aura.

I run pvt gear with boon duration runes (for a total of 70% boon duration increase, which means easy large stacks of might and 3 seconds of fury on attunement switch, and 7 sec long protection on earth attunement).

I run cavalier scepter (got lucky with a drop from fractaks), pvt dagger, and berserker accessories with a single cavalier earring. I have a PVT ascended backpack.

So, about 1970 base power, 28% crit chance (with maintainance oil it goes up to 39%), 1570 toughness (or about 1800 with stone barrier up), and about 70% critdmg.

I have 16000 HP.

The spec does alright dueling but I wouldn’t call it a roaming spec. Bunkers will not be killable (you have no sustain unlike d/d, since s/d autoattacks are zhitty), but your burst makes you a very good opportunistic killer. And it’s a very good spec for chasing and pressuring in skirmishes.

I think dagger/dagger overal is a much more universal toolkit (mainly because of scepter’s lack of sustain and impossible to land spells outside spvp points), and s/d is a weaponset that shines in skirmishes, especially 3v3-4v4-5v5.

If numbers get larger than that you just do better with staff (and by running 20 air, arcane missile, and air staff #2 you still have a good chunk of burst damage on demand).

And how come the signet heal? It’s an easily interrupted cast time, and at least Ether Renewal has a payoff of substantial condi removal.

Jumper.9482:

Soo… I suppose we’re headed to a more RNG-focused and less skill-based game seeing as how alot of shadowsteps and shadow returns now have a random chance at failing and flipping matches around by getting you killed.

Ex: Teamfight mid starts, I use my utility Shadowstep to attempt to get to the enemy ledge to pressure the Necro since Infiltrator Signet and Infiltrator Strike won’t work anymore. Guess what? Random fail proc. Now I have to waste 5 precious seconds walking around the stairs, time ticking away on my shadow return. Three of his allies assist him and CC me on the stairs. I Shadow Return. OOPS! 404-Error Were you trying to shadow return 1200 distance away from this situation? TOO BAD. You get 200 distance. Oh btw you’re dead.

Now, I have no problem with dying or getting outplayed. But when I’m relying on a utility and expect it to work as intended and there’s just a random chance of failure like that, I don’t even know what to say. Especially since everything was working as intended for the past 10 months up until yesterday.

I hope this happens to you many more times and to all those who play this cheap class just to train necros for a free kill.

God forbid classes actually have to traverse the terrain normally like everybody else that isn’t thief/ele/mesmer.

SallyStitches.4096:

Zenith.7301:

SallyStitches.4096:

I got a ticket on my fourth gem store coffer when I bought a pack of 5. I’m happy. It’s the same thing every time, people complaining about RNG. It’s supposed to be rare, not everyone will have one. I remember when MMO’s were far more frustrating then this to obtain pretty much anything you wanted, and nobody complained. All people want today is instant gratification. It’s like buying 100 lottery tickets, and calling the lottery office to complain you didn’t win when you should have due to the amount of tickets you bought.

You are really funny. I think your opinion would be quite different if your gems had turned just into candy and not a single ticket.

Yeah, and do you know how many times I HAVEN’T gotten a weapon ticket? The last time I got any of the special weapons was Halloween, and wasn’t due to lack of trying. I just didn’t feel the need to come here and kitten every time something didn’t go my way. I wanted a Southsun weapon but didn’t get one-oh well, life goes on. I’ll just focus on something else. So no, my opinion wouldn’t be different, because I’d just move on or farm the regular coffers for a chance, since those drop quite often.

Halloween skins were tradeable. You can buy a halloween skin even if you didn’t get a drop. Even now.

The exception have been fused/sclerite.

Wintersday were up in the gemstore and the tradeable ones are still on AH.

And most importantly, WTF happened to their token system from dungeons and beta? They trumpeted up their use of token systems and everyone getting rewards for their playtime, and then shortly before release the RNG makeover happens and everything in this game seems like it was adopted by a casino owner.

Lord Trejgon.2809:

I would say that You will be at major disadvantage WITH using sword
for melee Greatsword is a waaay better
(evede of every 3 auto atack, possibility of move!, hitting all enemies within range at 180 degrees in front, 1200 range swoop, 6 sec of 3stacks of bleed with 6 sec. cooldown, “counter atack” skill blocks all the atacks in his duration unless atacker is in melee range so then knockbakc him, “hilt bash” skill is great interrupter)
I don’t understand ppl that are playing with 1hsword as a ranger :P
btw. most good beastmaster build I’ve seen concentrate at using gs not 1hsword – see “beastmaster hybrid” on Youtube

GS is terrible outside movement.

It has less sustained DPS than sword autoattack, and you can pair sword and torch for MUCH greater aoe capability than greatsword, while comboing sword 2 into bonfire for fire aura (might stacks on being hit).

But, in the case of pve, just use both. Ranged weapons for ranger are kitten.

Liavain Axon.1972:

I can pretty much sum up the entire argument in the following post.

Player’s PoV:
Weapon skins are too hard to get!

Anet’s PoV:
You can just loot the coffers or buy them from the TP.

Player’s PoV:
It takes 100k candy to get the Holographic Wings!

Anet’s PoV:
You can get a wing skin from Achievements, a random drop, or can buy candy from the TP, loot them from chests, or from Holographic mobs.

Player’s PoV:
Anet is a bunch of money grubbing RNG huggers!

Anet’s PoV:
We offer more than enough ways to get things in game. Plus you never have to spend any money, gems can be purchased via gold.

How did I do?

Really badly, in a total PR spin way. Nuance is not really your strong suit.

Raven.9603:

Zenith.7301:

One of the reasons ranger does so poorly in pve as well is because of all the focus on the poison condition, which is useless in PvE, and in roaming most opponents have a heal that removes poison before the heal kicks in anyways (warrior, necro, thief, mesmer with inspiration trait, engineer turret, ele ether renewal; I think the guardian is the only class without a heal that actively removes poison before it heals).

i have to disagree here. i cant count how many times a day in wvw or spvp poison has been a key reason i won a fight. people in wvw simply are not running good condition removal, because the amount of condition based enemies makes it hard to justify, even for roamers (or because lol-zerg mentality).

• warriors hardly ever run that heal because all builds now are based on saving adren.
• engi turret only cleanses on the burst heal, and many engis are running HGH with the elixir heal.
• rangers have a pretty good split across each heal, so 2/3 chance hes not running spring, especially with the recent TU popularity.
• thieves, sure. but 30sec CD and is almost always their only condi removal because lol-wvw, especially since infusion of shadow competes with shadows embrace.
• most eles i meet are running d/d with signet or staff with glyph. poison will get them to blow their water attunement cd before they heal (and thus, almost all their condi removal).
• guardians have to eat it, and lets face it, it seems like half the wvw players are guardians.
• no one takes the mesmer trait because its 1 random removal, and better options exist.

which really just leaves necros as the only opponent who doesnt seem to be fazed by poison. sure, many of these classes have “every 10 sec, cure a condi…” but that still works out to an average of 5 seconds of them delaying a heal that they really need just for the auto-cleanse, and thats very useful too.

as far as pve, poison really doesnt come to mind as a short-coming. the problem has always been pet survivability is crap. and now, many groups insist on mesmers, guardians and warrriors. greatsword for warriors and guardians does much more damage in a dungeon than anything we have. even mesmers are only invited for their quickness to buff the plate wearing greatsword downies.

I take the mesmer trait, because I run mantra for 2 removals, on a measly 10 sec cd, and null field.

And I don’t know of any thief that doesn’t run condi removal on stealth for wvw considering most spec for roaming, and that trait is mandatory for roaming successfully against condition specs.

The only effect is smoke on the pistol.

The bows don’t have special effects.

SallyStitches.4096:

I got a ticket on my fourth gem store coffer when I bought a pack of 5. I’m happy. It’s the same thing every time, people complaining about RNG. It’s supposed to be rare, not everyone will have one. I remember when MMO’s were far more frustrating then this to obtain pretty much anything you wanted, and nobody complained. All people want today is instant gratification. It’s like buying 100 lottery tickets, and calling the lottery office to complain you didn’t win when you should have due to the amount of tickets you bought.

You are really funny. I think your opinion would be quite different if your gems had turned just into candy and not a single ticket.

People realize that if your team isn’t zerging together and hoarding buffs you are wasting your time.

displacedTitan.6897:

Just think Pixel that was in ONE DAY of the month long event. Is it really so hard to imagine getting a ticket with that many chances?

You failed statistics class, didn’t you?